• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.191-200
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• 2017

A robust parameter set (ROPS) selection framework for an unsteady flow model was developed by combining Pareto optimums obtained by outcomes of model calibration using multi-site observations with the minimax regret approach (MRA). The multi-site calibration problem which is a multi-objective problem was solved by using an aggregation approach which aggregates the weighted criteria related to different sites into one measure, and then performs a large number of individual optimization runs with different weight combinations to obtain Pareto solutions. Roughness parameter structure which can describe the variation of Manning's n with discharges and sub-reaches was proposed and the related coefficients were optimized as model parameters. By applying the MRA which is a decision criterion, the Pareto solutions were ranked based on the obtained regrets related to each Pareto solution, and the top-rated one due to the lowest aggregated regrets of both calibration and validation was determined as the only ROPS. It was found that the determination of variable roughness and the corresponding standardized RMSEs at the two gauging stations varies considerably depending on the combinations of weights on the two sites. This method can provide the robust parameter set for the multi-site calibration problems in hydrologic and hydraulic models.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.7-14
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• 1998

In order to understand the action mechanism of polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB) to the cyst of Accnthcnloebc on the morphological basis, the cysts of four corneal isolates of Acanthanoebc were treated with minimal cysticidal concentration (MCC) of PHMB and their ultrastructural changes were examined by transmission electron microscopy. The most striking change of cysts treated with PHMB compared with normal cysts was the shrinkage of intracystic amoebae, which resulted in the separation of the plasma membrane of intracystic amoeba from endocystic wall. Subplasmalemmal lipid droplets became irregularly shaped . In severely damaged cysts, cytoplasm was aggregated and organelles were severely deformed. Cytoplasmic materials were leaked out through the damaged plasma membrane. Most cysts showed aggregation of nuclear chromatin material. Number of mitochondrial cristae was also reduced. Ecto- and endo-cystic walls were relatively well tolerated. Findings in the present study revealed that PHMB affected mainly on plasma membrane, but lesser on organellar membrane of intracystic amoeba. It seemed likely that PHMB might kill cystic forms of Accnthamoebc by similar mechanism in which this environmental biocide can damage the cell wall of Escherichia coli by binding with acidic phospholipids.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.305-312
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• 2019

The discovery of nitric oxide (NO) as a major signaling molecule in a number of pathophysiological processes - vasodilation, immune response, platelet aggregation, wound repair, and cancer biology - has led to the development of various exogeneous NO delivery systems. However, the development of ideal delivery system for human body application is still left as a challenge due to its high reactivity and short half-life in physiological condition. In this article, an overview of several nano-structures as potential NO delivery system will be presented, along with their recent research results and biomedical applications. Nano-size delivery system has immense advantages compared to others due to its high surface-to-volume ratio and capability for surface modification; thus, it has been proven to be effective in delivering nitric oxide with enhanced performance. Through this novel nano-structure delivery system, we are expecting to achieve sustained release of nitric oxide within adequate range of concentration, which ensures desired drug effects at the target site. Among different nano-structures, in particular, nanoparticle, microemulsion and nanofilm will be reviewed and compared to each other in respect of nitric oxide release profile. The proposed nano-structures for exogeneous NO delivery have a biological significance in that it can be further utilized in diverse biomedical fields as a highly promising therapeutic method.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.203-213
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• 2021

A vehicle crash occurs due to various factors such as the geometry of the road section, traffic, and driver characteristics. A safety performance function has been used in many studies to estimate the relationship between vehicle crash and road factors statistically. And depends on the purpose of the analysis, various characteristic variables have been used. And various characteristic variables have been used in the studies depending on the purpose of analysis. The existing domestic studies generally reflect the average characteristics of the sections by quantifying the traffic volume in macro aggregate units such as the ADT, but this has a limitation that it cannot reflect the real-time changing traffic characteristics. Therefore, the need for research on effective aggregation units that can flexibly reflect the characteristics of the traffic environment arises. In this paper, we develop a safety performance function that can reflect the traffic characteristics in detail with an aggregate unit for one hour in addition to the daily model used in the previous studies. As part of the present study, we also perform a comparison and evaluation between models. The safety performance function for daily and hourly units is developed using a negative binomial regression model with the number of accidents as a dependent variable. In addition, the optimal negative binomial regression model for each of the hourly and daily models was selected, and their prediction performances were compared. The model and evaluation results presented in this paper can be used to determine the risk factors for accidents in the highway section considering the dynamic characteristics. In addition, the model and evaluation results can also be used as the basis for evaluating the availability and transferability of the hourly model.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.161-173
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• 2000

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of the frequency of the L$N_2$ infusion on the ultrastructure, metabolism and development of the embryo after freezing and thawing by computerized cell freezer. Two-cell embryos of ICR mouse were randomly allocated into fresh (control), high-frequency freezing (group 1) and low-frequency freezing (group 2). For fresh and frozen-thawed intact 2-cell embryos, total ceil number in the blastocyst was counted by fluorescent microscope after Hoechst 33258 staining. Relative amount of $H_2O$$_2$ was measured by DCHFDA. Intracellular location and membrane potential of the mitochondria were evaluated by staining with rhodamine 123 and JC-1. The structure of actin filament was also evaluated by confocal microscope. DNA fragmentation was assessed by TUNEL method after development into blastocyst. The survival rate of intact embryo was higher in group 1 than group 2 (50.7％ vs. 34.6％ respectively, p<0.05). The blastocyst developmental rate was significantly low in group 2 (86.7％, 76.7％ vs. 44.0％ for control, group 1 and group 2 respectively, p<0.05). Total cell number in the blastocyst was also significantly lower in group 2 than control (79.5$\pm$12.9, 71.6$\pm$8.0, and 62.5$\pm$4.7 for control, group 1 and group 2 respectively, p<0.05). The relative amount of $H_2O$$_2$ was higher in group 2 than other groups (15.3$\pm$3.0, 16.6$\pm$1.6 vs. 23.4$\pm$1.8, p<0.05). After JC-1 staining, relative intensity of mitochondria with high membrane potential was significantly lower in group 2 than control and group 1 (17.2$\pm$3.8, 17.4$\pm$1.3 vs. 13.2$\pm$2.0, p<0.05). In group 2, partial deletion and aggregation of the actin filament was found. DNA fragmentation rate was also hieher for group 2 versus other groups (30.8％, 36.0％ vs. 65.6％, p<0.05). The frequency of the L$N_2$ infusion is an important factor for the development of frozen-thawed mouse embryo. High-frequency infusion may prevent damages of cytoskeleton and mitochondria in the embryo probably by preventing the temperature fluctuation during dehydration phase. We speculate that the application of high-frequency infusion method in human embryo may be promising.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.279-288
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• 2007

In the present study, we focused on stem cells in the dental papilla of the tooth germ. The tooth germ, sometimes called the tooth bud, is the primordial structure from which a tooth is formed. The tooth germ consists of the enamel organ, the dental papilla, and the dental follicle. The dental papilla lies below a cellular aggregation of the enamel organ. Mesenchymal cells within the dental papilla are responsible for formation of dentin and pulp of a tooth. Tooth germ disappears as a tooth is formed, but that of a third molar stays in the jawbone of a human until the age of 10 to 16, because third molars grow slowly. Impacted third molar tooth germs from young adults are sometimes extracted for orthodontic treatment. In the present study, we evaluated the osteogenic activity and mineralization of cultured human dental papilla-derived cells. Dental papillas were harvested from mandible during surgical extraction of lower impacted third molar from 3 patients aged 13-15 years. After passage 3, the dental papilla-derived cells were trypsinized and subsequently suspended in the osteogenic induction DMEM medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum, 50 g/ml L-ascorbic acid 2-phosphate, 10 nM dexamethasone and 10 mM -glycerophosphate at a density of $1\;{\times}10^6\;cells/dish$ in a 100-mm culture dish. The dental papilla-derived cells were then cultured for 6 weeks and the medium was changes every 3 days during the incubation period. Dental papilla-derived cells showed positive alkaline phosphatase (ALP) staining during 42 days of culture period. The formation of ALP stain showed its maximal manifestation at day 7 of culture period, then decreased in intensity during the culture period. ALP mRNA level was largely elevated at 1 weeks and gradually decreased with culture time. Osteocalcin mRNA expression appeared at day 14 in culture, after that its expression continuously increased in a time-dependent manner up to day 28. The expression remained constant thereafter. Runx2 expression appeared at day 7 with no detection thereafter. Von Kossa-positive mineralization nodules were first present at day 14 in culture followed by an increased number of positive nodules during the entire duration of the culture period. Osteocalcin secretion was detectable in the culture medium from 1 week. The secretion of osteocalcin from dental papilla-derived cells into the medium greatly increased after 3 weeks although it showed a shallow increase by then. In conclusion, our study showed that cultured human dental papilla-derived cells differentiated into active osteoblastic cells that were involved in synthesis of bone matrix and the subsequent mineralization of the matrix.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Applied Microbiology Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.154-164
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• 2005

Saccharomyces cerevisiae KNU5377 is a thermotolerant strain, which can ferment ethanol from wasted papers and starch at 40$^{\circ}C$ with the almost same rate as at 30$^{\circ}C$. This strain showed alcohol fermentation ability to convert wasted papers 200 g (w/v) to ethanol 8.4% (v/v) at 40$^{\circ}C$, meaning that 8.4% ethanol is acceptable enough to ferment in the industrial economy. As well, all kinds of starch that are using in the industry were converted into ethanol at 40$^{\circ}C$ with the almost same rate as at 30$^{\circ}C$. Hyperthermic cell killing kinetics and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) revealed that exponentially growing cells of this yeast strain KNU5377 were more thermotolerant than those of S. cerevisiae ATCC24858 used as a control. This intrinsic thermotolernace did not result from the stability of entire cellular components but possibly from that of a particular target. Heat shock induced similar results in whole cell DSC profiles of both strains and the accumulation of trehalose in the cells of both strains, but the trehalose contents in the strain KNU5377 were 2.6 fold higher than that in the control strain. On the contrary to the trehalose level, the neutral trehalase activity in the KNU5377 cells was not changed after the heat shock. This result made a conclusion that though the trehalose may stabilize cellular components, the surplus of trehalose in KNU5377 strain was not essential for stabilization of whole cellular components. A constitutively thermotolerant yeast, S. cerevisiae KNU5377, was compared with a relatively thermosensitive control, S. cerevisiae ATCC24858, by assaying the fluidity and proton ATPase on the plasma membrane. Anisotropic values (r) of both strains were slightly increased by elevating the incubation temperatures from 25$^{\circ}C$ to 37$^{\circ}C$ when they were aerobically cultured for 12 hours in the YPD media, implying the membrane fluidity was decreased. While the temperature was elevated up to 40$^{\circ}C$, the fluidity was not changed in the KNU5377 cell, but rather increased in the control. This result implies that the plasma membrane of the KNU5377 cell can be characterized into the more stabilized state than control. Besides, heat shock decreased the fluidity in the control strain, but not in the KNU5377 strain. This means also there's a stabilization of the plasma membrane in the KNU5377 cell. Furthermore, the proton ATPase assay indicated the KNU5377 cell kept a relatively more stabilized glucose metabolism at high temperature than the control cell. Therefore, the results were concluded that the stabilization of plasma membrane and growth at high temperature for the KNU5377 cell. Genome wide transcription analysis showed that the heat shock responses were very complex and combinatory in the KNU5377 cell. Induced by the heat shock, a number of genes were related with the ubiquitin mediated proteolysis, metallothionein (prevent ROS production from copper), hsp27 (88-fold induced remarkably, preventing the protein aggregation and denaturation), oxidative stress response (to remove the hydrogen peroxide), and etc.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.86-96
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• 2006

Ecoclimap-1, a new complete surface parameter global database at a 1-km resolution, was previously presented. It is intended to be used to initialize the soil-vegetation- atmosphere transfer schemes in meteorological and climate models. Surface parameters in the Ecoclimap-1 database are provided in the form of a per-class value by an ecoclimatic base map from a simple merging of land cover and climate maps. The principal objective of this ecoclimatic map is to consider intra-class variability of life cycle that the usual land cover map cannot describe. Although the ecoclimatic map considering land cover and climate is used, the intra-class variability was still too high inside some classes. In this study, a new strategy is defined; the idea is to use the information contained in S10 NDVI SPOT/VEGETATION profiles to split a land cover into more homogeneous sub-classes. This utilizes an intra-class unsupervised sub-clustering methodology instead of simple merging. This study was performed to provide a new ecolimatic map over Northeast Asia in the framework of Ecoclimap-2 global database construction for surface parameters. We used the University of Maryland's 1km Global Land Cover Database (UMD) and a climate map to determine the initial number of clusters for intra-class sub-clustering. An unsupervised classification process using six years of NDVI profiles allows the discrimination of different behavior for each land cover class. We checked the spatial coherence of the classes and, if necessary, carried out an aggregation step of the clusters having a similar NDVI time series profile. From the mapping system, 29 ecosystems resulted for the study area. In terms of climate-related studies, this new ecosystem map may be useful as a base map to construct an Ecoclimap-2 database and to improve the surface climatology quality in the climate model.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.39-54
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• 2013

Recent explosive increase of electronic commerce provides many advantageous purchase opportunities to customers. In this situation, customers who do not have enough knowledge about their purchases, may accept product recommendations. Product recommender systems automatically reflect user's preference and provide recommendation list to the users. Thus, product recommender system in online shopping store has been known as one of the most popular tools for one-to-one marketing. However, recommender systems which do not properly reflect user's preference cause user's disappointment and waste of time. In this study, we propose a novel recommender system which uses data mining and multi-model ensemble techniques to enhance the recommendation performance through reflecting the precise user's preference. The research data is collected from the real-world online shopping store, which deals products from famous art galleries and museums in Korea. The data initially contain 5759 transaction data, but finally remain 3167 transaction data after deletion of null data. In this study, we transform the categorical variables into dummy variables and exclude outlier data. The proposed model consists of two steps. The first step predicts customers who have high likelihood to purchase products in the online shopping store. In this step, we first use logistic regression, decision trees, and artificial neural networks to predict customers who have high likelihood to purchase products in each product group. We perform above data mining techniques using SAS E-Miner software. In this study, we partition datasets into two sets as modeling and validation sets for the logistic regression and decision trees. We also partition datasets into three sets as training, test, and validation sets for the artificial neural network model. The validation dataset is equal for the all experiments. Then we composite the results of each predictor using the multi-model ensemble techniques such as bagging and bumping. Bagging is the abbreviation of "Bootstrap Aggregation" and it composite outputs from several machine learning techniques for raising the performance and stability of prediction or classification. This technique is special form of the averaging method. Bumping is the abbreviation of "Bootstrap Umbrella of Model Parameter," and it only considers the model which has the lowest error value. The results show that bumping outperforms bagging and the other predictors except for "Poster" product group. For the "Poster" product group, artificial neural network model performs better than the other models. In the second step, we use the market basket analysis to extract association rules for co-purchased products. We can extract thirty one association rules according to values of Lift, Support, and Confidence measure. We set the minimum transaction frequency to support associations as 5%, maximum number of items in an association as 4, and minimum confidence for rule generation as 10%. This study also excludes the extracted association rules below 1 of lift value. We finally get fifteen association rules by excluding duplicate rules. Among the fifteen association rules, eleven rules contain association between products in "Office Supplies" product group, one rules include the association between "Office Supplies" and "Fashion" product groups, and other three rules contain association between "Office Supplies" and "Home Decoration" product groups. Finally, the proposed product recommender systems provides list of recommendations to the proper customers. We test the usability of the proposed system by using prototype and real-world transaction and profile data. For this end, we construct the prototype system by using the ASP, Java Script and Microsoft Access. In addition, we survey about user satisfaction for the recommended product list from the proposed system and the randomly selected product lists. The participants for the survey are 173 persons who use MSN Messenger, Daum Caf$\acute{e}$, and P2P services. We evaluate the user satisfaction using five-scale Likert measure. This study also performs "Paired Sample T-test" for the results of the survey. The results show that the proposed model outperforms the random selection model with 1% statistical significance level. It means that the users satisfied the recommended product list significantly. The results also show that the proposed system may be useful in real-world online shopping store.

• Clean Technology
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.46-53
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• 2022

The agglomeration characteristics of coal and silica sand were investigated under various conditions using mixed samples consisting of coal, silica sand, and potassium hydroxide, which is an agglomeration accelerator. The samples were prepared by either physically mixing or using aqueous solutions. The experiments using the physically mixed powder samples were performed with a two hour reaction time. The results showed that the number of aggregates generated increased as the reaction temperature and the total potassium content increased. The experiments using aqueous solutions were performed at 880 ℃, which is the operating temperature of a fluidized bed boiler, and at 980 ℃, which assumes a local hot spot. The amount of agglomeration generated as the reaction time increased and the total potassium content increased was identified. In the experiment performed at 880 ℃, the amount of aggregate generated clearly increased with the reaction time, and in the experiment performed at 980 ℃, assuming a local hot spot, a large amount of aggregate was generated in a relatively short time. The aggregates became harder as the potassium content increased. When the total potassium content was less than 1.37 wt.%, the aggregates were weak at both temperatures and collapsed even with a slight impact. Additionally, the surface characteristics of the silica sand and ash aggregates were observed by SEM-EDS analysis. The analysis revealed a large amount of potassium at the bonding sites. This result indicates that there is a high possibility of aggregation in the form of a eutectic compound when the alkali component is increased.